Contemporary art and the museum in the global age

Abstract

For a long time, art museums seemed to have been born with a secure identity safeguarded by their designation to exhibit art and even to provide art with the necessary ritual of visibility. Yet now, as .we embark upon the global age, they face a new challenge. It remains to be seen whether the art museum, as an institution with a history looking back at least two hundred years in the West, is prepared for the age of globalization. There is no common notion of art that necessarily applies to all societies around the world. Contemporary art, which is what I will concentrate on in what follows, raises new and difficult questions. On the one hand, art production as a contemporary practice is expanding around the globe. On the other hand, precisely this recent explosion seems to threaten the survival of any safe notion of art, provided one still exists even in the West. Granted, new art museums have been established in many parts of the world: But will the institution survive this expansion? The presence of non-Western contemporary art in biennials and private collections is not a clear indication of whether its institutionalization in permanent and public collections will follow or whether, on the contrary, the new art production will undermine the profile of the museum. In other parts of the world, art museums either lack any history or are suffering from the history of colonialization. In short, I will analyze the museum in the light of a branch of contemporary art that I call global art.